Many states provide incentives to students, teachers, and schools for the participation and success of students on Advanced Placement (AP) examinations administered by the College Board. The purpose of this article is to examine whether these incentives help students enroll and succeed in AP exams. An analysis of nationally representative AP exam…

It is essential to implement a development strategy of "looking abroad" for Chinese-foreign cooperation in higher education and for us to realize a scientific concept for development, deepen and diversify market access, and improve the quality and benefits of higher education in China. We can learn from developed nations' experience in…

This paper aims to explore the ways in which nursery workers are constructed through government discourse in England. This is done by offering a deconstruction of key policy texts. The discursive construction of "the nursery worker" within government discourses has shifted over time but currently occupies a highly politicised position.…

Teacher performance appraisal policies are a part of a global complex of accountability based teacher policies. This paper is a study of the Ontario teacher performance appraisal (TPA) system. First, the paper describes the education reform contexts associated with the origins and adoption of the TPA policy. Then the paper reports on the results…

Increasing diversity is often advocated as an effective strategy through which higher education systems can cope with the new functions that they are required to perform, and respond to the varied demands that they face from an increasing and more diverse set of stakeholders. Such diversity is sometimes considered as the "natural"…

Planning for shared schooling in Northern Ireland requires a re-consideration of the decision-making processes that underpin the choices made by parents and a re-thinking of the nature and purpose of alternative modes of educating young people from the different communities together. The article provides evidence that demand for existing…

Both in the United States and the United Kingdom there has been a recent resurgence of interest and support for "new localism" in response to the need to provide local solutions to national complex problems. In this paper, the authors begin by exploring the contextual framework in the U.S. and the UK, explaining recent policy reform and…

Market-oriented reforms and school choice policies have had a high political profile in a number of developed countries. This article examines the issue of school choice through the lens of the English market-oriented reforms; it focuses on the quasi-regulation and regulation of admissions to publicly funded secondary schools. It examines…

It is often claimed that research on higher education has had little or no impact on HE policy-making, which is regarded as being largely driven by political ideology and the media and reinforced by little more than management consultancy. Recent higher education policy, it has been argued, is "a research-free zone" or at best…

In this article, I shall evaluate critically the democratic citizenship education project in South Africa to ascertain whether the patriotic sentiments expressed in the "Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy" (2001) are in conflict with the achievement of reconciliation and nation building (specifically peace and friendship) after…

Since 1999, concerns about Scotland's future health and economic performance have profoundly impacted on the new Scottish Executive. Research highlighting an obesity crisis facing young Scots has, together with the work of Scotland's Physical Activity Task Force and Physical Education Review Group, encouraged the education of all young Scots to be…

In response to more than two decades of criticism that American students exit high school lacking the skills and knowledge necessary for a productive citizenry, states have implemented graduation policies intended to raise academic standards for all students. Such policies have included state and local district testing, development of exit…

In Australia and internationally, government policies aim to increase the supply of early childhood teachers and thus improve the quality of early childhood education and care services. In this paper, we suggest that such a policy-quality trajectory in Australia is not as straightforward as policy discourses suggest. From industrial relations and…

In 2006 the author was contracted to research possible approaches to a UK indicator of education for sustainable development (ESD). This article describes and seeks to explain the response of government advisers and influential members of the UK ESD community to the approaches he proposed. While the UK strategy for sustainable development called…

The number of students enrolled in alternative settings for youth at risk of school failure has increased significantly in recent years. Students with disabilities, primarily students with emotional/behavioral disabilities and learning disabilities, are included in the population of students who are being educated in these settings. This article…